• While summarizing the changes Texas Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst hopes to implement with the Senate Select Committee on Open Government, Curt Olsen reminds, “Initiatives for 'open government' either improve access or hinder it." Olsen maintains that each change should be watched carefully, as, “ State lawmakers can pass laws that enhance openness and transparency or they can pass laws that cause mischief and erect a new hurdle for taxpayers to have access to government." The proposed changes include: “The use of new technologies and future technological advances as relates to the creation of public information” and “Study ways to define and address frivolous and/or overly-burdensome open records requests. “State lawmakers can pass laws that enhance openness and transparency or they can pass laws that cause mischief and erect a new hurdle for taxpayers to have access to government.” For the entire list and Olsen’s opinion, check out his post on Texas Budget Source.
• In her assessment of the state of Minnesota transparency, Mary Tracey maintains, “What matters to most citizens is the right to access to information by and about state, regional and local government information – state agencies, county boards, advisory committees and regulators, every entity from the Governor’s office to the local school board. In her post on Poking Around With Mary, she summarizes the open government portals available to Minnesotans: The twin pillars of access in Minnesota are the Data Practices Act and the Open Meeting Law.  Essential guides to each include these:  Open Meeting Law,Government Data Practices Act.  The Legislative Reference Libraryalso offers a comprehensive list of guides and information about parallel laws and regulations in other states." She urges citizens who are concerned with government transparency to “be aware of the agencies’ responsibilities to assure compliance with the spirit and the letter of the law.”

Bill Clinton famously tried to claim he hadn’t lied about his relationship Monica Lewinsky by saying, "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is.” Newt Gingrich similarly contorts the English language by claiming “I was never a lobbyist.” Perhaps Gingrich’s claim depends on what the meaning of the word “lobbyist” is. If it is the loophole ridden, easily evaded legal definition in the Lobbying Disclosure Act that allows power brokers to avoid registering as lobbyists if they spend less than 20 percent of their time lobbying, then maybe, maybe, Gingrich can claim with a straight face that he was not a lobbyist. But if common sense and Miriam Webster are applied, to lobby means, “to conduct activities aimed at influencing public officials and especially members of a legislative body on legislation.” Under that definition, there can be no doubt that Gingrich was a lobbyist, even if he didn’t fill out the paperwork.

The New York Times today correctly notes that people of Gingrich’s stature never register as lobbyists. It’s time to change that. Former members of Congress who trade their political connections for paychecks must be required register and report as lobbyists so that the public knows who is paying them and what positions they are advocating. Sunlight has long supported legislation that would strengthen the definition of lobbyist by eliminating the 20 percent loophole. The law should be clear. Former members of Congress should not be able to call themselves “consultants,” “strategic advisors,” or “historians,” while taking money from corporate clients to advance their causes on Capitol Hill. They are lobbyists.

Anti-lobbyist barbs will continue to fly this election season because they win easy political points. But instead of accusations and denials, name calling and obfuscation, it’s time for real reform that will capture all who lobby and impose much needed accountability on the system.

State Freedom of Information laws are in the limelight again. This time from Minnesota. The state's proposed revision's on FOIA have bloggers writing about the importance of accessing government data before a crisis happens. Charles Leck offers his view on how the state's proposal on what constitutes as public data may affect access to information in Minnesota.  He was also invited to attend a meeting (happening today) about the revisions and will give us an update. You can read his blog at ad astra.

Many ordinary citizens, like I, don’t really understand the importance of accessibility to public documents and information; we don’t understand, that is, until, in a crisis, we really need to get our hands on information squirreled away in the dungeon-like depths of government archives.

There is some rumbling over in the State Legislature about revising or altering one of Minnesota’s most important laws, the Data Practices Act – or the Freedom of Information Act (FIOA). That's cause for concern and it should make many of us sit up and take notice. I don’t think we should allow any changes that would make securing public information any more difficult than it all ready is.

Currently, this process of securing government data information goes through the Information Policy Analysis Division (with Apple’s forgiveness, it’s known as IPAD). The current director of that division of state government is Laurie Beyer-Kropuenske. The operation falls under the state’s Department of Administration.

Current state law defines Government Data as: “all data collected, created, received, maintained or disseminated by any government entity regardless of its physical form, storage media or conditions of use.”

Though the act does not require the data to be maintained in a particular form or format, it is required that the data be “easily accessible for convenient use.” (Minn. Stat. § 13.03, subd. 1)

However, our ability to get at important information in government files is crucial to the process of Democracy – and crucial to the process of protecting and maintaining our rights as free citizens. To repeat myself, the last thing we want are changes to our current law that would make that process more difficult for Joe Blow citizens.

IPAD appears to be pushing for some changes, however, and they argue that the changes are necessary in light of recent budget cuts aimed at “streamlining government operations.”

RED FLAG! RED FLAG! Some of the proposals that IPAD is floating around the State Legislature might redefine what is to be regarded as public data and also changes the procedures that would be followed in applying for and securing such data. Naturally, IPAD argues that the procedures would create a more precisely defined law and make the procedures more efficient.

I’d want to make sure “if I was you” (as my old man used to say). And, if I were you and you live in Minnesota, I’d suggest you start communicating with your State Representative and State Senator right now and ask them to be wary of any changes that might make the procedure of securing public information more complicated. I’m going to send a draft of this blog on to both State Representative Steve Smith and State Senator Gen Olson, my representatives over at the capitol.

It’s already too difficult to secure information. The popular, veteran, and now retired newsman, Don Shelby, wrote in a MinnPost column last April that he “had a career batting average of about .150” on his FOIA filings. “Most of what I wanted to get at, I was told, ‘was none of my business.”

In case you don’t know what a 150 batting average is, it means you have success 1.5 out of every 20 times you come to bat. That’s not very good in one’s attempt to secure information that should be considered public. And, Shelby is not just an ordinary citizen like I am. He’s very familiar with the ins and outs of the current law and its procedures. He also had staff available to wait out the delays that IPAD can create for an applicant.

We simply should not consider changes that would diminish even more the access that is granted to public information. In fact, we ought to be going the other way with FOIA and making access less complicated.

Beyer-Kropuenske claims that IPAD is seeking a public discussion about the policy proposals – proposals, she says, that aren't even written into a proposed bill yet. Nevertheless, she calls the draft that is now circulating, according to Politics in Minnesota (1), a “preliminary proposal that is likely to be introduced this session.”

The IPAD Director is particularly interested in a variety of stakeholders (League of Minnesota Cities and Minnesota Coalition on Government Information). An open meeting was held in December and organizations like the Minnesota Newspaper Association had a representative there. It’s sad, however, that ordinary guys don’t get information about the meeting and we can’t easily get our hands on a copy of the proposed changes.

Even Common Cause of Minnesota, an organization I consider primary in representing my own interests in such matters, heard about the meeting after-the-fact.

A red flag, as far as I’m concerned (having not seen the document) is that a former IPAD director is concerned about it. Donald Gemberling was IPAD’s director for a very long period of time and he now serves as a spokesman and treasurer for the Minnesota Coalition on Government Information (MnCOGI). He alerts us to the fact that the government, under the proposal, could sit on a public data request for six months under certain circumstances.

The proposal also calls for the removal of elected officials from the personnel section of the data law. Currently rules regarding how state legislators and senators should be treated have been up to each body. That, I think, makes them much more accountable to the general public in terms of how they define themselves. A blanket change in the law that defines legislators as “private” would not be wise at all.

At this point, I’m very concerned about just who the director of IPAD considers stakeholders in this matter. There should be many more organizations included in her list and I think members of the press should be included in notices about such “open” meetings. I’d jump at the chance to be included myself. And, I have sent an email to IPAD requesting a copy of the proposals that have been made available to others  that Beyer-Kropuenske considers “stakeholders.” (see copy below)

(1)   Horwath, Justin: IPAD floats proposed changes to public information law [Politics in Minnesota, 13 January 2012]

• Americans for Prosperity-Nebraska, a free-market advocacy group, has filed a complaint with the state attorney general against the Lincoln-Lancaster County Public Building Commission, alleging the body violated the state’s open meetings laws. The complaint alleges that commission did not provide adeuate notice of an emergency meeting to draw up plans to buy a bulding near city hall. The only notice the commission provided was one hasty flier on bulletin board inside the City-County Building and a notice on a website the morning of the meeting. Don Killeen, building administrator for the Public Building Commision, maintained that the city's attorney claimed the flier met the state law’s requirements for public notice of an emergency meeting. Normally, the Public Building Commission’s regular meetings are advertised in the newspaper. However, the director of the Nebraska chapter of Americans for Prosperity, Brad Stevens, said in a press release, “Hanging a flier inside the City/County building announcing this irregular meeting of the PBC is an insult to taxpayers.” For more information, read Deena Winter’s post on The Franklin Center for Government  & Public Integrity. 

• Hudson County’s Joint Commission on Public Ethics has already taken some heat for holding part of its executive  meeting behind closed doors. Associated Press reporter Michael Gormley asked for an explanation as to why the board was headed into private session, citing New York state’s Open Meetings Law. The outgoing executive director, Barry Ginsberg, explained that JCOPE—like former state ethics panels—is exempt from the Open Meetings Law and the Freedom of Information law. Westchester County District Attorney Janet DiFiore, the chairwoman of JCOPE, maintains that while the board will try to hold public, but sensitive matters—such as personnel decisions and investigations—would need to be done in private. For the whole story, check out James M. Odato’s post on Times Union.
• New Jersey Attorney General Paula Dow has created new rules to keep records of any State Police overtime pay confidential, blocking their access to the public. A Superior Court ruling from 2005 said that the records could be used to determine patrolmen’s assignments, like Homeland Security, undercover cases and the Executive Protection Unit. State Police overtime records had actually been shown on a state website from Governor Chris Christie’s administration designed to promote government transparency and to use for open public records requests for state employees salary numbers. The website, called Christie’s "Transparency Center," will no longer post policemen’s salaries. Supporters of open government said taxpayers have the right to track public spending. Ron Miskoff of the New Jersey Foundation for Open Government said, according to the Republic, "The public is paying the freight, and I don't see how knowing someone's overtime will put anyone in danger." For Bob Holt’s take, read his post on New Jersey Newsroom. 
• The Sunshine Review has given Kansas a transparency score of “B.” The Kansas state website earned a “B” grade, accounting for half of Kansas’ overall grade. Sunshine Review also analyzed the websites of the five largest counties, which averaged a “B.” The five largest cities earned a “B+” and the ten largest school districts averaged a “C+.”Kansas’ scores across the board are just average compared to other states around the country. Anything less than an ‘A+’ is a disservice to Kansas taxpayers,” said Michael Barnhart, President of Sunshine Review. “Transparency should be a priority to every elected official and voter. Citizens in Kansas and around our nation deserve to have the information they need to hold their government accountable.” For the whole story, read Fred Gough’s post on Hutch Post.

Connect with other transparency bloggers in this Transparency Bloggers Google group   and see what others are doing in the transparency movement by joining this Citizens for Open Government Google Group.

Joining us today as our guest blogger is Jason Hibbets. Jason is the project manager at Red Hat and lead administrator for opensource.com. Sunlight is a great supporter of the CityCamp initiative and continues to highlight efforts in City and State open government.

The theme that emerged from the first CityCamp Honolulu, held on December 3 (the 17th CityCamp held worldwide), was restoring citizen confidence in their government. In a very collaborative and participatory atmosphere, organizers looked to citizens to generate ideas for the City of Honolulu's upcoming Code for America project and to harness the power of design thinking to rapidly prototype ten topics generated during the unconference.

Government panel and first break out sessions

Burt Lum, a CityCamp Honolulu organizer, kicked off the day and kept participants on track during the event. Lum provided a brief introduction about what to expect. The day started with a government panel to provide an update on current and future initiatives in the City and County of Honolulu. The panel included Gordon Bruce, CIO at City and County of Honolulu, Forest Frizzell, Deputy Director at City and County of Honolulu, and Doug Chin, Managing Director, City of Honolulu.

Forest Frizzell, also an organizer for the CityCamp, shared a timeline that highlighted initiatives that have already happened, such as Can Do Honolulu, an online portal for citizens. The timeline then showed the CityCamp event and a 24-hour hackathon scheduled for January 2012. The momentum from these events will feed the Code for America kickoff in February 2012 and an anticipated Open 311 project also in 2012. Bruce talked about the vision to create a smarter citizen. He said if government IT can present a clear vision that improves services, saves money, and manages IT costs, the results will lead to engaged citizens who participate in their government. Bruce also touched on the Office of Information Practices open data policy. If they get a request for open data, they produce the data set and open it to the public. "If media X comes in and asks for data, instead of just giving it to the media, we're going to give it to the public. We'll get it on the Can Do site," Bruce stated.

"It's a real change in how we think and how we do things," he said. It's this type of shift in mentality that is making real progress in open government. More IT departments should take note and look to establish similar policies to provide open data to citizens in this manner. After the panel, attendees transitioned into unconference mode. Voting for the day's sessions concluded, and the first five sessions were announced. Participants moved to the breakout rooms and started to collaborate on their chosen topics. I attended and participated in a session about S.W.E.E.T.S.: Surf, Weather, Emergencies, Events, Traffic, and Services. The idea was to create one platform that brings all of the city and county departments together. It would leverage real-time, location-based data to keep citizens informed on what's happening right now.

Business panel and second break out sessions

After a short lunch break, the second panel of the day provided perspectives from outside of Hawaii. I joined the panel with Alissa Black, Government Relations Director at Code for America and Steve Bretches, a consultant at IBM. Our goal was to provide insight to the audience from what we're seeing around the rest of North America and beyond. Black highlighted Code for America projects like Change By Us, Classtalk, and Where's My School Bus. Bretches helped to draw comparisons between technology and the people who use it. "It's not about technology, it's about the cooperation with the government, community, and businesses," claimed Bretches.

I added lessons we could learn from the open source world, such as creating a participatory and inviting environment that would lead to a culture of transparency and accountability. I also provided examples of what's happening at other CityCamps. In Colorado, they are looking to advance adoption of the Open Government Directive. In Raleigh, we are continuing the CityCamp movement with quarterly meetups and project follow-up. The second round of sessions started. I jumped in and moderated a session on making the City of Honolulu's budget more transparent. The participants and I made an outline of what is currently available from the city and drafted action steps to explore how an open budget would be citizen-friendly by prototyping several use cases and scenarios.

Design thinking

The final charge for the day was to begin prototyping the top ten ideas that had been generated. The organizers prepared a brief introduction by showing a video from NYU Wagner on design thinking for public policy and social impact. Participants then broke into ten different groups began to rapid prototype the ideas from the day that included:

•  S.W.E.E.T.S.: Surf, Weather, Emergencies, Events , Traffic, and Services (real-time city information)
• Adopt-a-node (wifi)
• Real-time bus arrival
• Standard API
• Expand online service
• Trash to treasure
• Pay for parking/find a parking spot application
• Map a bike lane/find a bike route application
• City tax revenue/spending trends (transparent budget)
• City reminders

Inspired by CityCamp

CityCamp Honolulu was a huge success. Frizzell reacted at the end of the day, "I'm overwhelmed. I can't believe how many people showed. Today was a huge success. We got a ton of ideas that we could act on—that we could develop in-house or in partnership with the local development community. Citycamp was so useful, and we inspired a lot of people." I was inspired by the attendees, ideas, and the participants at CityCamp Honolulu. And I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only one. In closing, organizer Frizzell charged CityCampers with a mission. He challenged the community to help transition the CityCamp event from an emotional movement into a reality. "How do we inspire people to become involved?" he asked.

Frizzell proclaimed, "It's not about the app; it's not about the open data; it's about people taking a more active roll in their community." What can a CityCamp can do for your community? As Frizzell pointed out, it's a movement that can engage your local community. I'll add that CityCamp can restore trust in government. The activities and projects from the CityCamp movement are re-engaging citizens who think they don't have a voice in government. It's giving people a reason to participate and not just the latest hot topic of debate.

From the event

•    Tweet stream
•     Photos on our Facebook page
•    Pictures on Flickr: bytemarks, hawaii, madmarv00
•    Media coverage: Hawaii joins the "city camp" initiative
•    YouTube - CityCamp Honolulu

This is the third and last part of Matt's post on the Open Government Partnership

National governments seeking to become open should look not only to smart NGOs, software developers, students and journalists, but to town councils, which generally tend to face more direct pressure for accountability on a daily basis in their communities.

Although varying conditions may dictate different strategies, the ultimate destination is a common one. Any government that wants to call itself open must provide free and accessible public information on taxation, draft and adopted budgets, and actual year-end spending including contract awards. There should be full and open disclosure on government bidding processes, job openings, salaries and benefits, court proceedings and legislation prior to and after passage. Also vital are sharing of key data on economic performance, public health conditions, and fair metrics of student and teacher performance at public schools. A lynchpin of open government is a trustworthy and transparent elections process including impartial and open adjudication of fraud allegations.

A next layer of transparency would include wide promotion of census data, and adopted laws which serve to daylight public records, lobbying, campaign contributions, and ethics and accountability oversight in government.

Girding the whole disclosure framework should be government reports and data created in machine-readable formats, and liberally posted online.

As OGP, its member nations and their domestic partners work to bring ambitious open government plans to life, here are a few more things they should bear in mind.

• Crowd-sourced sites which accent the need for government response also require a formal and public adoption by government. Nobody wants to report into an abyss. "Open 311" sites which allow citizens to report and see resolution of cracked sidewalks, broken streetlights, gaping potholes, broken park equipment can be a huge force for building trust and engaging publics - if reports actually prompt action. To get to this point requires real collaboration between site developers, officialdom, and constituents.

• Most people aren't tech geeks, even in advanced economies. Although software developers are crucial partners, keep the needs of everyday constituents foremost. Throwing 400 government data sets online is not an open government policy. Track what developers do, if much of anything, with all those data sets once posted. How many actually get rendered into browser-friendly Web sites and easy mobile apps? How widely are the sites and apps used? And make sure to look beyond the open data craze no matter how well outcomes of data portals are tracked. As Nathaniel Heller of Global Integrity, an OGP partner, blogs:

  Instead of fetishizing open data portals for the sake of having open data portals, I'd rather see governments incorporating open data as a way to address more fundamental structural challenges around extractives (through maps and budget data), the political process (through real-time disclosure of campaign contributions), or budget priorities (through online publication of budget line-items).

• Another thing: impenetrable gov-speak has got to go. Written government communications including laws, regulations, audits, reports, contracts and more should be in plain language only.

• The trend toward more and more data visualizations, audio and video is good if it's user-focused. Videos of full meetings of legislative or regulatory bodies need should be indexed by main topics and include keyword-searchable transcripts. Prototypes are already emerging.

• Reveal and revile censorship and intimidation of media and activists, first by highlighting the oversight work of organizations such as Reporters Without Borders, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, and second, through vigorous state prosecution of those who seek to censor, threaten or otherwise intimidate reporters and activists. Hello, Mexico?

• Reflecting recommendations in a landmark report issued by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission earlier this year, more foundations and philanthropists should support independent non-profit media doing valuable work on transparency, particularly "last mile delivery" of the fruits of open government.

But public officials who aspire to wring utility more than huzzahs out of open government initiatives would do well to heed the musty adage,"'dance with them that brought you," popular among the old-time ward-heelers of New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago.

It's just that the partners and the venue for the dance look a whole lot different these days.

In this second  in a three-part series, guest blogger Matt Rosenberg continues to reflect on the Open Government Partnership

Egypt, for instance, could hardly be expected to commit now to a formal national plan for open government nor is it yet part of OGP. But as the country sorts out its post-Mubarak political future it's already evident that crowd-sourced data, literally from the street, are being used to push for social and government reforms. Women in Cairo are using a site called Harass Map, built on the open-source platform Ushahidi, to document widespread and traditionally tolerated sexual harassment. Reports can be texted, e-mailed or tweeted, to be integrated into the growing and mapped compendium of uncivil behavior. Categories include rape-sexual assault, indecent exposure, stalking or following, touching, sexual invites,  phone calls, comments, catcalls, and ogling.

India is not a member of the Open Government Partnership and given that government corruption is still considered a notorious scourge there, any state-stamped transparency scheme would be met with skepticism. Yet that hasn't prevented a vibrant community of reformers from adapting new tools to an old concern. The transparency site ipaidabribe.com collects firsthand reports on the intimidation by government officials of businesses and citizens through informally-mandated payoffs, and offers related data analytics. It was created by Janaagraha, a Bangalore-based non-profit focused on quality of life and citizenship in urban India. In the Central Gondwana region of India, tribal members report on and learn about problems that citizens encounter with government, through a mobile phone voice portal called CGNet Swara. It has a Web hub and journalists to vet and edit reports. The service's impacts include seeding mainstream overage and sometimes corrective action on problems with worker compensation, food security, public safety and resource extraction. Recognizing the vital role of local intelligence, CGNet Swara has branched into training citizen journalists. India's Association for Democratic Reforms, or ADR, is a pioneering open government group in the country, which has successfully won the right for voters to know the financial, criminal and educational backgrounds of candidates for office. In a country where reformers sadly note that many candidates are criminals, this matters. The information is made available via Short Message Service on mobile phones. ADR also monitors courts and elections, provides counsel to officials on best practices, and reports on a wide range of transparency and corruption issues.

In India open government is a bottom-up endeavor. Perhaps, as the old saying goes: if the people will lead, then the leaders will follow. Which isn't to say leadership from officialdom can't become transformative. One national data initiative unveiled in 2011 has attracted broad notice in "open" circles but it will take time to gauge its social utility. It was launched this summer by the Kenyan government, which will be joining the Open Government Partnership. The Kenyan open data portal covers a wide range of economic, government spending, health, education and other topics and pointedly emphasizes opportunities to drill-down to the state, regional and local level. There are maps and fact sheets, charts and tables and raw data for developers to create new apps. Community apps developed from initiative data so far include tools to scrutinize energy use and progress on Community Development Fund and World Bank projects, and to map and categorize constituent service needs. An especially useful mash-up is BOOST, which presents annual spending in the provinces side-by-side with demographic, poverty and public health indicators such as percent of households with dirt floors, or connections to the main sewer line; and percent of population that has never attended school, or is of pre-primary age. While young, Kenya's initiative shows how trust and collaboration might grow through open data, although that is just one aspect of the transparency agenda. In contrast, Ukraine, another of the 38 nations joining OGP, is trying to get to first base, by establishing rules of law and building civil society, as I learned when I met with a Ukraine delegation visiting Seattle earlier this year through the U.S. State Department's International Visitor Leadership Program and The World Affairs Council - Seattle. The visitors included representatives of Ukraine NGOs working, variously, to provide legal aid to citizens in property disputes with government; to strengthen the climate for small and medium-sized business by modernizing the tax code and fighting government corruption; and to promote freedom of association and civil society organizations. Other participants represented organizations working to fight media censorship, and to develop civic capacity projects targeted to youth. Knowing their animating concerns, and listening to their questions - which showed keen interest in matters as granular as the posting online of local city council meeting agendas before the meetings are held - I could begin to sense what a more genuinely open government in Ukraine would need to look like.

But for the administration of President Victor F. Yanukovich to have any credibility on open government, a major course correction is needed. As two former U.S. ambassadors to Ukraine observed last March, the nation's reputation for openness is suffering because of a "corrupt, politically-driven judiciary" and state prosecutors doing Yanukovich's political bidding. In October a show trial conviction of his political rival and former Prime Minister Yulia V. Tymoshenko added to that perception, sparking vociferous protests and threatening the nation's integration into the European Union. Even before the verdict, the case was being read as, in the words of one expert on European governance, "an extremely worrying sign that (Yanukovich) is moving to exert a monopolistic control over politics." The road to credibility for Ukraine is littered with larger boulders. Consider the conditions described in Ukraine via Transparency International's "Corruption Perceptions Index 2010" report issued this year. Ukraine scored only 2.4 on a scale of 10, far more at the "highly corrupt" end of things than the "very clean." Key concerns included: murkiness about the difference between political and government workers; weak laws on conflict of interest for public workers; lack of competition for high-level public sector jobs; poor legal rights for public servants arbitrarily fired; law enforcement agencies and a judiciary which don't prosecute corruption effectively; a lack of whistleblower protections for public employees; and a lack of annual performance and accountability reports required of the legislature and government agencies.

However, farther from Kiev are promising signs. Open government in Ukraine is building from the grassroots up. Earlier this year, Albertville, Minnesota City Administrator Larry Cruse was part of a local delegation of public officials which visited counterparts in Boryspill, Ukraine in an exchange program intended to build skills and capacity around open government. (A group from Boryspil visited Minnesota in late September.) Cruse lived with a local family for a week and immersed himself in local governance. Unlike like smaller and non-partisan municipal bodies in the U.S., the local council of Boryspil had 48 members from 13 political parties. But Cruse observed that caucuses and negotiations to form issue-specific coalitions helped provide order to the process, and that open government in Boryspil had a strong face-to-face component. Cruse wrote:

A good portion of our time was spent in strategic planning sessions with anywhere from 20 to 50 people representing elected officials, city staff and citizens of Boryspil. Throughout the day, the large groups were broken up into small sub-groups to discuss various topics, exchange ideas and then report their finding back to the larger group for further discussions and consensus building. There were elected officials and staff mixed together with members of the community at all the functions. The students and community members were delighted and emotionally moved to be sharing their thoughts and ideas alongside of the Mayor and other officials.

Today's guest blog is a three-part series from Matt Rosenberg. Matt is founder and editor of Public Data Ferret, a project of the non-profit Public Eye Northwest in Seattle, Washington.

U.S. President Barack Obama this autumn joined with other global leaders to formally unveil the Open Government Partnership as the United Nations met in New York City. Funding for the partnership so far is $733,500 from the Transparency and Accountability Initiative, $350,000 from Google and in-kind contributions from the U.S. government, World Bank Institute and others. The eight charter members have already formalized their commitment to the core principles of disclosure, engagement, integrity, innovation and accountability. The eight are the Year One co-leaders the U.S. and Brazil, plus Indonesia, Mexico, Norway, the Philippines, South Africa and the United Kingdom. Another 38 countries are committed to joining, many from eastern and northern Europe but also seven from South and Central America, four from Africa and three from the Middle East. An important step in the partnership's agenda will come at a March 2012 Brazil meeting with the presentation by each new member of an open government plan of their own, against which future actions can be measured.

The New York event gave rise to the expected lofty statements. In a speech, Philippines President Benigno S. Acquino III, remarked: "This is what democracy is all about: having a government disciplined enough to imbibe in itself the principles of transparency, accountability, and citizen involvement-the necessary preconditions to poverty alleviation and inclusive and sustainable economic growth."

Who could be against imbibing that? But in an open society the media don't always parrot the party line. Only the day prior, news reporters had chastised the White House in print for an advance briefing on the Open Government Partnership by State Department officials who insisted on being described only as "Senior Administration Official 1" and "Senior Administration Official 2". Standard operating procedure in most high-level briefings, true. But, implied the reaction - from the Associated Press, Tech President, and Politico, to name a few - rather discordant for a big "transparency" initiative. It wasn't the first time in recent months that the gap between words and deeds on U.S. open government efforts had drawn notice.

The day after the partnership's formal unveiling, J. Nicholas Hoover of Information Week wrote:

...the Obama administration's commitment to open government hasn't always lived up to its rhetoric. For example, the White House has aggressively pursued whistleblowers and leakers of information, and in court cases has regularly used the defense that certain data must be shielded from the public as state secrets. (A March 2011) event recognizing Obama for a commitment to open government was ironically closed to the press...Congress' record in recent years has also been mixed. For example, while the websites of congressional committees now nearly universally stream congressional hearings, Congress has slashed a key source of funding for transparency efforts. Federal court records are also difficult to access online, and are often available only behind a paywall. The new National Action Plan and international partnership on open government are positive additional steps pointing toward increased transparency, but will ultimately be judged by their execution, and not the initial plans.

This qualitative harvesting must be incisive and unflinching because real conditions on the ground greatly shape implementation of open government. Earlier this year I led a conversation on transparency with mid-career government officials from Yemen, Tunisia, Guineau, Djibouti, India, Pakistan, Trinidad and Tobago, Lithuania and South Korea, who were among the enrollees in a year-long program as Hubert H. Humphrey Fellows at the University of Washington's Evans School of Public Affairs, in Seattle. The dominant concern of the group was how to develop a flexible model for building open government systems, keeping in mind widely varying socio-political environments in different nations. Participants identified some of the big questions that need to guide any open government visioning at national scale. These fell into two broad areas.

1. Political culture. Are political corruption and cronyism an animating concern? How is the national government experienced, on the whole, by the populace? As an authoritative patriarch which discourages close scrutiny? As despotic and dangerous, or unstable? As a work in progress, or  in the best case as genuinely transparent, strategic and collaborative? Do the principles of universal human rights have purchase, and is there true freedom of the press or not?
2. Education, economy and technology. What is the state of education in the country - do scientific and secular views hold sway or not? Are higher ed and institutional R&D in a healthy state, and is there a burgeoning community of public-spirited software developers? Is the economy open or state-run?  What are the particulars of technology adoption and access across class lines?

Read the rest of Matt's post tomorrow...

• According to Galloway Township News, New Jersey’s Galloway Township has failed to release an agenda for the townships meeting their meeting on Tuesday, November 21, 2011. GallowayTwpNews.com emailed township manager Steven Bonanni on Sunday to remind him the agenda had not been released. Bonanni said he was on vacation and that he would follow up with the agenda on Monday morning. The agenda has still not been released. Galloway Township News maintains that Galloway Township has broken the state’s open meeting law that requires the public bodies provide the public with adequate advance notice of all its meetings. For the whole story, check out Harry B. Scheeler’s post at Galloway Township News.
• During a campaign speech in 2010, Nevada’s Nye County Treasurer Mike Maher promised citizens he would provide “accurate, timely, financial information so you can be capable of being informed and capable of either supporting a solution to a financial action by your elected officials prior to expenditures being made instead of after an expenditure is being made.” Maher is eight months behind in filing the monthly treasurer's reports,the verge of having a complaint filed against him in District Court. Nye County Commissioner Joni Eastley  maintained that if monthly treasurer reports through Oct. 31 were not produced by the Dec. 6 county commission meeting, she will put an item on the agenda Dec. 20 to file a complaint against Maher. To read more, check out Mark Waite’s post on the Pahrump Valley Times.
• An effort to create an online forum that would allow Oregon City’s 10 urban renewal commissioners to publicly discuss agency business came to a quick halt after city officials raised concerns about hosting what amounts to a meeting that never ends. The recommendation from Commissioner Phil Yateswas intended to allow the urban renewal board to share opinions during the lull between its twice-a-month meetings. Commissioners often run short on time at meetings and that’s led at least one member to question the agency’s effectiveness. The process would be transparent and the public could listen in on the conversation any time, Yates said. For more information, check out Steve Mayes’ post at Oregon Live.
• A Washington State Court of Appeals recently held that prison inmate Robert Johnson’s public records lawsuit against the State of Washington Department of Corrections was time-barred, and therefore dismissed. In August 2006, Johnson sent a public records request to the Department of Correction’s Public Disclosure Unit requesting information about the Extended Family Visitation policy revision. The DOC told Johnson that the only responsive record was one email documenting approval of the policy change, which Johnson received in early September, 2006. Over the next few months, Johnson submitted a duplicate public records request to various Department of Corrections Public Disclosure officers seeking the same information identified in his original request. After a series of additional requests, the Department sent Johnson a final letter on August 27, 2007, noting that Johnson had already received the sole responsive document, and that his request was considered closed. Over two years later, another requestor, Melinda Carter, sought the same information as Johnson. Carter was provided with nearly substantially more information than Johnson, over 300 pages of documents in response to her request. In December 2009, Johnson filed a Public Records Act (“PRA”) action to compel production of records that the Department of Corrections ostensibly withheld. Johnson contended that the Department of Corrections violated the PRA by only disclosing a single email when he had requested all records pertaining to the Extended Family Visitation policy change. He cited Carter’s request and DOC’s 300-page response as evidence to support his claim. The superior court denied Johnson’s motion and dismissed his PRA action. The Court of Appeals affirmed, finding Johnson’s arguments were time-barred. See Alicia Feichtmeir’s post on the Local Open Government Blog, for more information.

A while back, we wrote about the different ways in which Opengovernment.org helps bloggers and activists alike to track legislative data in their states. You can read all about it here , here and here. The three-part series explained how you can use this tool to follow important bills in your state, while learning more about your local representatives. We’re always looking for feedback that helps us revamp our tools to create more user friendly interfaces -- so we’d like you to share with us what you’d like to see out of a tool that lets you see into your state government.

We would like to hear your thoughts and suggestions regarding the kind of information you are interested in seeing about your state -- to make it more open and accessible. In this Opengovernment.org user survey, we invite you to explore the site here (if it’s your first time learning about it) then share your impressions.

Not sure where to start? Just to give you some ideas, I recently looked into the Campaign Contributions section which highlights the money trail in each state. Each of the six featured states has a detailed section on campaign contributions, grouped mainly by industry or sector. It is no secret that one of the biggest problems we are facing in our democracy is undisclosed money in politics, with special interests lurking around our legislators to push for their own motives instead of ours. What data we do have, however, (from the National Institute on Money in State Politics is in opengovernment.org, with the top 20 contributors and their top 20 recipients highlighted. You can follow the money trail by issue or sector. For example, care about choice issues? Political Action Committees (PACs) that work on issues having to do with abortion and choice contributed a total of $190,874. Take a look at California’s money trail to see: A brief glance at California’s Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan (the top most recipient of money from these groups), reveals that at $21,152.00 she received the most in campaign contributions, and Emily’s List may be one of the top contributors on these issues, in at $142,356.

So, as part of the revamping process for Opengovernment.org, perhaps a tool that links top lobbyists to state legislators would be an in-depth way of fully understanding who connects the money to the power.

You too can play around with the site and see what you can find then send us your suggestions.

To take the Opengovernment.org survey, please click here: